...Reading about Writers I Met Once and Wanted to Be Like, Who have Since Died
Posted by Steven Wingate at 1/29/2008 6:57 PM and is filed under Eric Brown,Bohemianism,Paris,Los Angeles,Ted Joans,Jack Micheline,Ronald Sukenick 
I’ve just finished reading Sascha Feinstein’s Ask Me Now: Conversations of Jazz and Literature, a full review of which will appear soon in Rain Taxi. In it I ran across the names of two writers I met long ago, both of whom have since died—which I didn’t know until I read about it. The mention of these names got me thinking about the old days when I wanted to be a gypsy/bohemian/troubadour, living footloose off the opportunities my traveling, Beatnik-y life gave me. And it got me thinking about why I never tried that kind of life, or at least not with full gusto, and what I’ve missed by not doing so.
First stop: 1992 or so. I found myself in Los Angeles, working grunt jobs in film production or accounts payable (which was worse?) while trying to sell my screenplays. My social life centered on the poetry reading scene, and I read my stuff all over town three or four nights a week. My closest buddies were part of a great bohemian party scene centered at the sadly-deceased Onyx Cafe in Los Feliz and a house at 1428 Nadeau Street, where lived a dynamic poet named Eric Brown with his manic energy and endless well of poems. Shit, this guy could write. Totally freely, too. Anyway I hung around with them, trying unsuccessfully to pick up on the bohemian girls who thought I was way too square (and were probably right, since I had an MFA by then and was trying to sell screenplays, after all). We read at laundromats and on the train to Long Beach once, two poets to a car. We put on a pageant to celebrate the end of the Year of the Monkey in an ex-factory downtown that had been abandoned after the Rodney King riots of 1991, and exulted when the fire department shut it down.
Absolute heaven for Bukowski-wannabes, which we all were to some extent. I thought I could make it with that crowd, thought I could suppress the MFA and he desire for stability and the desire for a girlfriend who only did drugs occasionally for fun, rather than constantly out of an unquenchable emotional need she didn’t understand.
But then came the day that Jack Micheline (1929-1998) showed up at 1428 Nadeau Street, crashing at the house en route from one place to another. He apparently lived out of a small, ancient-looking suitcase—which I remember quite vividly (though probably wrongly) as yellowish-beige with small red and black stripes on either side. It contained a few clothes and a many manuscripts. He had bad teeth and gums and looked like he drank too much. Hey, just being honest here. No need to sugar-coat the fact that the gypsy/bohemian/troubadour life is hard on the body. I remember watching him move, sitting next to him on the couch and chatting with him (drunkenly—no memory left of actual details), and realizing THERE IS NO WAY I CAN LIVE THIS LIFE WHAT AM I DOING HERE GET ME OUT OF MY FANTASY NOW.
At a certain point in the evening Jack Micheline read from those manuscripts in the suitcase, and he was dynamite. He put everything into his words in a way I only dreamed of. I asked myself if I had the balls to live the life he did, to sacrifice my teeth and my stability for my art, and the answer was definitely no.
The boho girls were right. Too square. Within a few months I had moved back to Colorado and started looking for a real job.
Next stop: 1996 or so. I found myself in Paris with a night to kill before my flight left from DeGaulle in the morning. I’d heard from an older writer friend, Ronald Sukenick (1932-2004), about a weekly gathering at the 14th Arrondisement (I think) home of a man whose name I can’t remember now. If you paid his cover charge, you got to hang out with a bunch of literary types and eat as much food drink as much red wine as you could handle. A salon of sorts. So I showed up, introduced myself to the host, and went looking for the only other frequenter of the salon that Ron told me about whose name I recognized: the poet, musician, painter, and former Charlie Parker roommate Ted Joans (1928-2003). Ted wasn’t hard to find because he was one of only three black men at the party, and the only one over fifty. I laid in wait for him until he went back to the buffet table to get some more food, then introduced myself and said Ron Sukenick sent me.
“Did he say I was the Black Surrealist?” asked Ted.
“Yup.”
We shook hands, and I had officially met Ted Joans. One of the last surviving Surrealists, one of the last surviving Beats. Definitely the very last survivor of his own unique kind.
We talked for awhile, until it’s somebody else’s turn with him, about his writings (which I just barely knew, thanks to a last-minute cram in anticipation of meeting him in Paris) and his travels. He’d been all over the world, it seemed, and moved around it with a casualness that I, as one who had aspired to the bohemian life for so long, envied. He had met everyone. He lived his art, breathed his art. He wanted me to tell Ron that he’d be glad to come out to Colorado and do a reading the next time he was in the States, provided we could pay him well enough.
It should have been a disillusioning moment for me—not about Ted, since I had no illusions about him whatsoever, but about myself and my bohemian dreams. By that time, though, I had already lost some of my yen for the bohemian life. My pangs for lure of the road felt more like an echo to me, and left me slowly (just as did my desire to live in Manhattan after growing up in its shadow). I knew by the time I met Ted Joans that I simply didn’t have the balls to live the way he did, so it wasn’t quite the same shocking self-realization as I experienced when I met Micheline. It was more a sensation of Yup, those LA boho girls were right.
And they still are, I guess. I like knowing where my next paycheck is coming from, like having an institution to be part of so that people can more easily pigeonhole me when we meet. Maybe my life is all the worse for never having tried to give up my fears and follow my art the way Micheline and Joans did. Maybe my art is all the worse, too. Every once in awhile I get a vision of who I might have been had given bohemianism a serious try: poet rather then fictionist, less domesticated, less lured by the trappings of stability. I like being able to see that other self, and fear for the day when I can’t see it any longer.
So thanks, Jack and Ted, for reminding me of it. Rest in peace, or however you’d like to rest.
First stop: 1992 or so. I found myself in Los Angeles, working grunt jobs in film production or accounts payable (which was worse?) while trying to sell my screenplays. My social life centered on the poetry reading scene, and I read my stuff all over town three or four nights a week. My closest buddies were part of a great bohemian party scene centered at the sadly-deceased Onyx Cafe in Los Feliz and a house at 1428 Nadeau Street, where lived a dynamic poet named Eric Brown with his manic energy and endless well of poems. Shit, this guy could write. Totally freely, too. Anyway I hung around with them, trying unsuccessfully to pick up on the bohemian girls who thought I was way too square (and were probably right, since I had an MFA by then and was trying to sell screenplays, after all). We read at laundromats and on the train to Long Beach once, two poets to a car. We put on a pageant to celebrate the end of the Year of the Monkey in an ex-factory downtown that had been abandoned after the Rodney King riots of 1991, and exulted when the fire department shut it down.
Absolute heaven for Bukowski-wannabes, which we all were to some extent. I thought I could make it with that crowd, thought I could suppress the MFA and he desire for stability and the desire for a girlfriend who only did drugs occasionally for fun, rather than constantly out of an unquenchable emotional need she didn’t understand.
But then came the day that Jack Micheline (1929-1998) showed up at 1428 Nadeau Street, crashing at the house en route from one place to another. He apparently lived out of a small, ancient-looking suitcase—which I remember quite vividly (though probably wrongly) as yellowish-beige with small red and black stripes on either side. It contained a few clothes and a many manuscripts. He had bad teeth and gums and looked like he drank too much. Hey, just being honest here. No need to sugar-coat the fact that the gypsy/bohemian/troubadour life is hard on the body. I remember watching him move, sitting next to him on the couch and chatting with him (drunkenly—no memory left of actual details), and realizing THERE IS NO WAY I CAN LIVE THIS LIFE WHAT AM I DOING HERE GET ME OUT OF MY FANTASY NOW.
At a certain point in the evening Jack Micheline read from those manuscripts in the suitcase, and he was dynamite. He put everything into his words in a way I only dreamed of. I asked myself if I had the balls to live the life he did, to sacrifice my teeth and my stability for my art, and the answer was definitely no.
The boho girls were right. Too square. Within a few months I had moved back to Colorado and started looking for a real job.
Next stop: 1996 or so. I found myself in Paris with a night to kill before my flight left from DeGaulle in the morning. I’d heard from an older writer friend, Ronald Sukenick (1932-2004), about a weekly gathering at the 14th Arrondisement (I think) home of a man whose name I can’t remember now. If you paid his cover charge, you got to hang out with a bunch of literary types and eat as much food drink as much red wine as you could handle. A salon of sorts. So I showed up, introduced myself to the host, and went looking for the only other frequenter of the salon that Ron told me about whose name I recognized: the poet, musician, painter, and former Charlie Parker roommate Ted Joans (1928-2003). Ted wasn’t hard to find because he was one of only three black men at the party, and the only one over fifty. I laid in wait for him until he went back to the buffet table to get some more food, then introduced myself and said Ron Sukenick sent me.
“Did he say I was the Black Surrealist?” asked Ted.
“Yup.”
We shook hands, and I had officially met Ted Joans. One of the last surviving Surrealists, one of the last surviving Beats. Definitely the very last survivor of his own unique kind.
We talked for awhile, until it’s somebody else’s turn with him, about his writings (which I just barely knew, thanks to a last-minute cram in anticipation of meeting him in Paris) and his travels. He’d been all over the world, it seemed, and moved around it with a casualness that I, as one who had aspired to the bohemian life for so long, envied. He had met everyone. He lived his art, breathed his art. He wanted me to tell Ron that he’d be glad to come out to Colorado and do a reading the next time he was in the States, provided we could pay him well enough.
It should have been a disillusioning moment for me—not about Ted, since I had no illusions about him whatsoever, but about myself and my bohemian dreams. By that time, though, I had already lost some of my yen for the bohemian life. My pangs for lure of the road felt more like an echo to me, and left me slowly (just as did my desire to live in Manhattan after growing up in its shadow). I knew by the time I met Ted Joans that I simply didn’t have the balls to live the way he did, so it wasn’t quite the same shocking self-realization as I experienced when I met Micheline. It was more a sensation of Yup, those LA boho girls were right.
And they still are, I guess. I like knowing where my next paycheck is coming from, like having an institution to be part of so that people can more easily pigeonhole me when we meet. Maybe my life is all the worse for never having tried to give up my fears and follow my art the way Micheline and Joans did. Maybe my art is all the worse, too. Every once in awhile I get a vision of who I might have been had given bohemianism a serious try: poet rather then fictionist, less domesticated, less lured by the trappings of stability. I like being able to see that other self, and fear for the day when I can’t see it any longer.
So thanks, Jack and Ted, for reminding me of it. Rest in peace, or however you’d like to rest.
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